Wednesday, October 15, 2008

SNOPES LIES

SNOPES!!

Just forwarding. I checked out the site that is recommended (http://truthandfiction.com/) in place of Snopes, and it said it was under construction. That's all I know.

"Check Snopes -out. Now you know"I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not trust Snopes.com....ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don't even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.

"A few conservative speakers on Myspace told me about snopes.com a few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. This website is backing Obama and is covering up for him. They will say anything that makes him look bad is a hoax and they also tell lies on the other side about McCain and Palin.

"Anyway just FYI please don't use Snopes.com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself."This is just a forward!

In the second case, above, the author is arguing that snopes is legitimate. However, the author acknowledges that there are some "liberal rants" in snopes (so the bias is undoubtedly present). Furthermore, there are a few (emphasis on FEW) examples in the above two links (look at the commentary) where snopes takes a clearly more left-leaning position.

Here is a somewhat interesting one I found myself:

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/l/lawyersues.htm

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp

The article from snopes is the closest one I could find on that website that talks about his birth certificate. However, rather than asking about his place of birth, it "proves" that his mother was not too young (a rumor that I wasn't aware of). The counter-version from Truth or Fiction takes a more comprehensive look at the status of his state of birth and notes that some of the information is true, some false and the most important piece is yet to be proven.

Based on my overview, I would say that snopes is following some deceptive practices to favor their political favorites. On the other hand, I don't see signs of "many things [Snopes] have listed on their site as a hoax and you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying." More accurately, there are a few things that are not outright lights, but certainly appear to be intentional dodging of the real issues/questions.

For my part, I think I will continue to rely on snopes and truthorfiction for email hoaxes - but if it is politically related, I will give snopes less credibility and will seek verification elsewhere.

For those of you who flamed the poster without doing a bit of this same research - why not?

As to "why not", I didn't put a blog up containing a message trying to weasel out with a "I'm just the messenger" statement. Also, how I ended up *here* was attempting to validate any points in an e-mail I received that this blog reposted. So, since this site-owner seems reasonable intelligence-connected I'd really like to see why he felt it was so important to re-post without any supporting evidence.

Hi; do you have any specific examples? A youtube video, perhaps, like you said?

As for Snopes being "in the tank" for Obama, well, as Steven Colbert once said, "Truth has a left-wing bias". The more lies the right tells about Obama, the more lies Snopes has to debunk. The bias doesn't come from Snopes.

Here is what factcheck.org had to say about Snopes: http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_snopescom_run_by_very_democratic_proprietors.html

Snopes does not mention Obama saying Austrian is the language of Austria, that's one they've just ignored.

They then distort the Obama quote about visiting 57 states by this piece of artful obfuscation: "During a campaign stop, Barack Obama said that he had visited 57 states", a reference to 57 Islamic states. They tacked on the last part 'a reference to 57 Islamic states' and then claim that the statement isn't true.

How would snopes claim to know what his intention was? Do they lend other speakers the same benefit of the doubt?

About Me

For many years involved with intelligence and security matters in Iran with significant access at top levels during the rule of the Shah, until early 1979. Currently an Iran SME (subject matter expert), analyst/commentator, and multi-linguist.